Information superiority key to success of operations

A high-level conference called for continued national and NATO investment in information and intelligence-sharing, noting that this had a direct impact on the Alliance’s ability to succeed in Afghanistan.

Some 300 experts and senior decision-makers, including NATO commanders who had led operations in the south of Afghanistan, took part in the NATO Network Enabled Capability (NNEC) Conference in Antalya, Turkey, 30 April – 2 May.

The NNEC initiative aims to ensure that the Alliance’s multinational forces are ‘wired’ for 21st century operations, able to share and exchange information effectively enough to achieve information and decision superiority.

“The right information in the right form, delivered to the right people at the right time is what this is all about” said NATO’s Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Transformation, Admiral Luciano Zappata, “It is a simple, but challenging goal.”

Progress towards ‘networked’ operations

“Over the past year, we have seen tremendous progress in areas such as friendly force tracking and the impact on the ground is clear,” he stressed, “Our soldiers are safer and commanders have a vastly superior situational awareness.”

“But there are further areas in which we need to improve; we have agreed on far-reaching blueprints for information exchanges, now we just need to do it, to get this out in to the field, out into Afghanistan.”

In Afghanistan, state of the art reconnaissance, communication, information, intelligence and surveillance technologies are playing an important role in NATO’s campaign.

“Afghanistan is taking NATO networked-enabled operations from concept to reality,” said Maj. Gen. Koen Gijsbers, ACT Assistant Chief of Staff for Command, Control, Communications, Computers and Intelligence, “And this is the big NNEC success - what five years ago was blue-sky thinking is today making a real difference in our operations in Afghanistan.”

At NATO's recent Bucharest Summit, Heads of State and Government agreed that NATO must continue to strengthen information superiority through networked capabilities and the NNEC concept.